Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Defense against Distraction
Welcome fellow #iDevBlogADay readers. I’m Will Culpepper, a fairly new, solo iPhone developer. My company is called eliolhan and I have four programs on the iOS App Store: How Old Am I, Tipidy, Workaday and DisCalc. I’ve been working on my first game since October and I’m blogging my progress.
I want to talk about what I’ve learned in the last few months about Distractions and how to fight them.
Assuming your instincts haven’t served you well*, the key is to distinguish between recoverable and fatal distractions**.
Recoverable distractions (like having to go to the restroom) are short and unrelated to the task at hand. They lead you astray because they physically take you away from where you’re doing work. With a little practice, you can learn to take care of them and quickly get back on track.
Fatal distractions are worse. They can derail you onto a whole series of other activities and before you know it, the day is gone***. Then you find yourself in month six of what was supposed to be a one-month project. You’d feel pretty stupid if you let that happen, right?
Moving along…
The first defense is to remove physical distractions:
The environment
- turn phone off or mute
- turn on a masking sound such as a fan
- keep your desk uncluttered
Your body
- eat regular meals, with light snacks and clear water between
- watch your sitting posture
- remember to breathe deeply and correctly
The second defense is to capture ideas so they can be dealt with later. Keeping ideas all in your head causes anxiety. As for me, I keep a plain text file on my desktop called Distracting Thoughts. It’s where I jot down new app ideas, essay topics, art projects and anything else that might take me away from THE OCTOBER GAME. Later, I make time to execute some of those smaller ideas, holding off on bigger projects until after the game is done. The final stage is to release the ideas into the wild. As an outlet, try deviantArt, a tumblr sketch blog or a just-for-fun twitter account.
The third defense is to set a definite priority when you start a task. Urgent, high and low are fine enough distinctions. When a distraction presents itself, you can quickly make a stop/don’t stop decision right then and there. For instance: Should you stop and go mail your business license renewal before the post office closes or should you finish the code and graphics for the expiredTimer alertBox?**** You need to have a clear idea of your true priorities or you’ll be buffeted by every loud or scary-sounding or interesting thing crossing your path*****.
The fourth defense is using an onramp technique, to let you overcome inertia and smoothly get into (or back into) a working frame of mind. See my older post for more detail.
Finally, try not to beat yourself up too badly if you keep getting distracted. Achieving better focus is a learnable skill and can be improved if you apply yourself.
Good luck!
*If you’re reading this blog post instead of working on your game, for instance.
**Fatal to your productivity, not your life, unless you’re writing immortality software, I guess.
*** Internet addiction says what?
**** The correct answer is “expiredTimer alertBox” since I needed to make coding progress for morale reasons. Plus, I had a few days grace period on the renewal, thanks for asking.
***** Like the iPad2 announcement. Non, je ne regrette rien.